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Tuesday, April 29, 2014

It’s been nearly a year since I wrote about William the Conqueror’s DNA. Based on a study
of men with surnames historically associated with William and their
corresponding Y-DNA, I concluded that I identified the genetic signature of the
first Norman King of England. Now it’s
time to get back to William and more specifically his 3rd
great grandfather, Rollo. To be honest,
the 37 marker Y-DNA haplotype that I published is really connected to Richard
the Fearless, William’s great grandfather.
Genealogically, the surnames in the study trace back to Richard. As long as there was no hanky-panky, William
the Conqueror has the same Y-DNA as Richard.
What that also means is that Richard has the same Y-DNA as his
grandfather, Rollo.

Based on the work done in my previous paper, the
following haplotype is that of William the Conqueror (and Richard the Fearless)-

DYS393

DYS390

DYS19

DYS391

DYS385a

DYS385b

DYS426

DYS388

DYS439

DYS389i

DYS392

DYS389ii

13

24

14

11

11

14

12

12

12

13

13

29

DYS458

DYS459a

DYS459b

DYS455

DYS454

DYS447

DYS437

DYS448

DYS449

DYS464a

DYS464b

DYS464c

DYS464d

17

9

10

11

11

25

15

19

29

15

15

17

17

DYS460

Y-GATA-H4

YCAIIa

YCAIIb

DYS456

DYS607

DYS576

DYS570

CDYa

CDYb

DYS442

DYS438

11

11

19

23

15

15

17

17

36

37

12

12

There is an assumption, inherent in genetic genealogy, that there weren’t any non-paternal
events between the generations that separate Rollo and William and that this haplotype
is that of Rollo as well. One of the
goals for this Rollo study is to get more accurate with his haplotype by
narrowing the dataset to only those records with 67 markers. The second goal is to determine Rollo’s
haplogroup R SNP. The best I was able to
determine for William was R-P312, which is a fairly high level SNP. My third goal is to determine Rollo’s origin
using my TribeMapper analysis.
Whether Rollo is Danish or Norwegian has been disputed for hundreds of
years.

I picked up where I left off with William. There were 152 Y-DNA records that made it
into the William the Conqueror Modal Haplotype (WCMH). For each of these records a 67 marker test
result and SNP testing result were added to the analysis, where the data was
available. I threw out any record that
didn’t have enough data and retained the ones that grouped into a single SNP of
R-DF13 (just downstream of R-L21). Based
on these final 25 records, I have identified the 67 marker Rollo Norman Modal Haplotype
(RNMH) as follows:

This map shows the geographic distribution of Rollo’s
cousins. The large number of points
along the coast of Normandy is a good sign.
If the majority of points were in Eastern Europe, I would have to
revisit my whole hypothesis about William the Conqueror. It is best not to try to interpret any
relationships until we look at them through the lens of a phylogenetic tree.

The TribeMapper analysis takes into consideration the mapped
location, the tree node connections and the time between common ancestors. The time is converted to distance based on
the demic diffusion migration rate. The
distance is plotted to ‘triangulate’ the geographic location of each common
ancestor. This is a process called
multilateration.

The earliest documented origins for Rollo come from Dudo of
Saint-Quentin in 1015 and William of Jumièges in 1060. Both ‘histories’ were commissioned by the
House of Normandy and attribute a Danish origin to Rollo. Commissioned biographies can border on
mythology. The Norwegian Orkneyinga
Saga, from the 13th century, gives Rollo a Norwegian origin.

I’ve run the analysis with Rollo’s record as an unknown
location. TribeMapper allows us to back
into the location for any unknown point.
What we get is a highly constrained location for Rollo’s ancestor, in
the middle of Denmark. The data then
shows that Rollo may have lived within 226 km of that paternal ancestor. The red circle illustrates the range for
Rollo. This covers the majority of
Denmark. The data also shows that Rollo’s
ancestors, going back at least 12 generations were also in Denmark.

We can give the Norwegians some credit also. The ancestors of Rollo’s ancestors were
Nowegian, with an origin on the west coast of Norway. Rollo’s ancestors were responsible for
multiple branches of migration into Europe.
This includes a back migration into Norway that then went on to invade
Scotland.

This was accomplished with small sample of 65 records for
simplification. Much larger data sets could
determine the genetic flow in a greater geographic and chronologic view. Additional records within the same SNP
grouping could result in a more accurate origin for Rollo. Records that are genetically upstream from
the SNP and STR group used, may identify the nomadic migrations prior to the
Western Norway settlement.